Theme Song and Opening
The gospel-styled theme song was composed by Dave Grusin with lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman. It was sung by Jim Gilstrap and Blinky Williams.
The lyrics to the theme song are notorious for being hard to discern, notably the line "Hanging in a chow line"/"Hanging in and jiving" (depending on the source used). Dave Chappelle used this part of the lyrics as a quiz in his "I Know Black People" skit on Chappelle's Show in which the former was claimed as the answer. The insert for the Season One DVD box set has the lyric as "hangin' in a chow line". However, the Bergmans confirmed that the lyric is actually "hanging in and jiving.". Slightly different lyrics were used for the closing credits, with the song beginning on a verse instead of the chorus.
Initial seasons featured the theme song played over stark visuals of an economically depressed Chicago neighborhood (in similar fashion to most of Norman Lear's other sitcoms of the time, which also depicted the characters' neighborhoods, using real footage of the cities in which they were set), before zooming in on a window of a housing project and then cutting to an oil painting of an African American family (presumably intended to represent one of J.J. Evans' paintings, as the character was depicted as a budding artist). Norman Lear hired artist Ernie Barnes to paint the pictures which J.J. used in the show. Barnes' work displays elongated African American subjects in everyday scenes. Later seasons used the same theme song recording, but showed clips from various episodes, as the actors were credited.
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Famous quotes containing the words theme, song and/or opening:
“And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme ...”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Turn back,
back
to the lake of Delos;
lest all the song notes
pause and break
across a blood-stained throat....”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Seeing myself well lost once more, I sighed,
“Where, where in Heaven am I? But don’t tell me!
O opening clouds, by opening on me wide.
Let’s let my heavenly lostness overwhelm me.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)